Character & personality development

Where do we spend most of our time today as parents? Do we spend most of our time in pursuit of our career? Are we entangled in a maze of new relationships and trying to find our way out of that maze? Are we spending time in preparation of the next meal? Are we busy updating our knowledge of what is happening to our economy or in the world? Are we busy surfing the worldwide web that makes us get in the center of its core? Are we busy contacting our extended family? Are we busy updating information from our old and new friends? What is keeping us busy all day?


Time is running out for a most important task that we have in hand that is time bound and could not be postponed or done in a relaxed setting. There are several challenges in getting it done and we have to find a way to derive our answers on the fly. Help from other parents in terms of how to manage it is only helpful to a certain extent as each situation and each personality are so different. Yes. I am talking about the responsibility of raising a child.



To a large extend the parents make a sincere effort to make the children understand more about the parents than them trying to understand the nature of the children. In a fast moving life, the parents have time only to ask questions like, “how was the school today?” “Is there a test coming up soon?” “When will you get your progress report?” “Do you have any homework? Do you need help with that?” Otherwise, we are busy taking them physically to Karate, Dance, Sports classes to enhance their extra-curricular activities.



In most families, the mother devotes more time in raising the child than the father unless she is pursuing a full time career and that makes her stay away from home most of the time. In cases where both parents pursue career, mostly, the child is taken care by the child care center or by someone like one of the grand parents or some other relative.


Earlier, in joint families, all children were considered equally and at least one of the elders would do everything to shape up the character and personality of the children. Now most of the families are nuclear and they do not have other adults playing any role in shaping the personality and character of the children. There is no curriculum in the school for character building and personality development.



I believe it is very important for both the parents to be intensely involved in development of the children. This warrants allocation of significant amount of time and I would consider this as a priority even higher than our own career development. I know some parents could ask if we do not pursue our career, how would we be able to give higher education for the children and how would we have enough to take care of ourselves after retirement? I am not suggesting that we should abandon pursuing the career but serious time should be spent in character and personality development of the children.


First step towards this character and personality development is to understand the children’s nature. Our secular education only helps us resolve issues for the children in their homework but it is our understanding of our children’s nature that really helps us to build their character and personality. We have to encourage them to do whatever they have significant interest in and should spend as much time in listening to them as spending time in telling them what to do.


The five critical values we need to inculcate among the children at the early stages of their growth are Truth, Right Conduct, Love, Peace and Non-violence. There are several sub-values that stem out of these five principle values. We have to make them understand that we need to follow certain disciplines in their life to build character. They need to be firmly established that if character is lost, everything is lost. One of the essential elements of this learning involves reading books to the children consisting of values in life. As a peripheral benefit, the children develop the habit of listening and reading.



We have to encourage them to ask a lot of questions and no matter how much we are tired of their questions, we need to let them ask questions. The first step in making the children to listen to us is to make them feel at home in discussing everything with us and to win their confidence. The time frame to do this character and personality development effort is when the children begin going to the school and until the children finish their school. Unlike the secular education, character and personality development curriculum is heavy at an early stage of development of the children and slowly becomes much lesser as they get older. The reason is because as they grow, they build several of the character and personality development lessons into their lives.


There is nothing equivalent to practical application of character and personality development. Learning theory is different from learning to apply them in their practical life. Every time, when the children get into trouble at an early stage, the parents should not consider that as a sign of problem but consider that as a good opportunity for the children to learn something new. Our effort should be actually to minimize them as they grow older.



During this time frame, the children are growing from the stage of under developed brain activities to fully developed brain. Before, they graduate from the school, we should build their personality to make informed and independent decisions. At this stage, we should only assist them in decision making and not make decisions for them. When we do character and personality development, we should ask them a series of questions and make them derive answers to their life problems. There is nothing better we could teach them more than the lessons they learn from their own day-to-day life.
We have to first understand when they are at development stage, they build significant character and personality emulating the parents. Therefore, it is our duty to watch how we behave at home with our spouse and how we conduct ourselves with other adults and children. For example, if a child picks up the phone and informs you that so and so is calling, it is not advisable to tell the child to tell the person on the other side that the parents are away from home. These types of actions only make them to learn that they should behave one way before others and the other way when they are alone. They are also watching how we conduct ourselves with our parents.



Actually, one blog is not good enough to present all the thoughts about how to raise children. Especially, since most are already known to the parents, it makes no sense to document every minute detail. I am not a psychologist or psychiatrist to present the right solution for every child’s needs. Obviously, the parents are the best judge. I have to make a tacit admission here that I did not follow many of the details I have mentioned above and had learned them the hard way.

 

Thanks for being the first to respond to this blog. I was planning to write this blog for a while and one of the IL Members' response to "Conversation with Children" triggered me to write it immediately.

I am so happy to hear that it is useful. On a side note, I came to know from your response to another IL member that you were busy with tight work schedule and hence could not write that frequently. I am one of those IL members who anxiously wait to ready your blogs. Hopefully, the work schedule would be easier soon. With kind regards.

Viswa

 

Thank you for your feedback.

Viswa

 

Thank you for your kind feedback. It is not most scientific but practical way I learned parenting watching and doing it myself. Probaly most parents do know many of these already. Thank you for your great encouragement for these kind of blogs.

Viswa

 

Thank you for your nice feedback. Bonding with children are better once they know that they could share anything with us. We have to give that confidence to them. I also like the word discipline as opposed to obedience. I feel if you ask them to follow a discipline, they feel it is something that they are implementing in their life. Once we call it obedience, it is always related to another person.

Viswa